Even though people always say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” the cover is the reason Cinder
caught my attention. I knew about this book because I saw a classmate reading
it and I liked the cover, I asked her what it was about and I thought it seemed
interesting, so I bought it… and I don’t regret it, The Lunar Chronicles has become one of my favorite series!

Cinder
transports us to a futuristic Earth, where robotics and technology has advanced
a lot,

making possible the creation of space ships, androids, even cyborgs. The
story occurs in the city of New Beijing, where Linh Cinder, a 16 year old
mechanic, is exploited and humiliated by her stepmother just because she is a
cyborg. One day, Prince Kai visits her booth in the marketplace because he
wants her to repair his android, and that’s how their paths intertwine. Prince
Kai is having a rough moment, his father, the emperor, has the lethal, incurable,
and highly contagious letumosis, and
also, he must deal with the lunar queen, Levana, who wants to become empress of
the Commonwealth, and will do anything to accomplish it. For some reason (I won’t
spoil you), Cinder and Kai start seeing each other frequently, and they start
developing feelings for each other, but he is being forced by Queen Levana to accept
a marriage alliance. If he does marry her, she will give him the cure for letumosis, but if he doesn’t, she will
start a war.

Cinder
shows us a science fiction world where space traveling is a common thing, where
humans have colonized the moon, and there they’ve evolved until develop the
interesting ability of controlling other’s brain bioelectricity. They can
manipulate others to see, feel, or do what they want.

There
are so many things I love about this book and I don’t know where to start. First
of all, I like the fact that the story doesn’t occur in America or Europe, I think
it’s the first book I’ve read located in Asia.

Marissa
Meyer did an excellent job with the world building, it is based in the one we
know, but it’s after a Fourth World War. The way she explains how everything
works sounds absolutely believable, for example the way Cinder’s cyborg part works.

The Lunar Chronicles
has a vast diversity of characters, something shown since the first book. They
all have different personalities and are well developed; you can develop
feelings towards them, love them or hate them.

I think
that despite being a retelling of Cinderella it is super different. Cinder uses
they key moments of Cinderella, but in an original and interesting way. It’s so
different that you sometimes forget that it was based on that fairy tale, I recalled
it nearly the end.

I can’t
think of anything I didn’t like of this book, the only thing that comes to my
mind is

that the beginning is kind of slow, and I wasn’t hooked with it until
the second half of the book, but that has an explanation. In the first half Meyer
explains a lot about the world, Luna, the relation between Earth and Luna, lunars,
and we get to know the characters.

Something
that caught my attention is that it approaches the topic of discrimination, in
this case towards cyborgs and lunars, but mainly towards cyborgs as cinder. Despite
of being people they are treated as belongings and have no rights.

In
my opinion it’s a really good first book, it has action, an interesting plot,
well developed and interesting characters, romance (even though is not the main
thing), and definitely makes you want to know what happens next. I highly recommend
it :)